Periodic Reporting for period 3 - B4EST (Adaptive BREEDING for productive, sustainable and resilient FORESTs under climate change)
Reporting period: 2021-05-01 to 2022-09-30
With 160 million ha in 2020, forests cover approximately 39% of the EU-28’s land area that is key to biodiversity conservation, carbon storage and the provision of renewable raw materials for the bio-based economy. European forests are experiencing rapid climate change characterized by high uncertainty in its timing and magnitude. Climate change increases forest vulnerability to damage and disease, fostering abiotic and biotic threats that affect forest sustainability and cause severe economic losses.
The strategic goal of B4EST was to increase forest resilience and productivity under climate change, while maintaining genetic diversity and key ecological functions and fostering a competitive EU bio-based economy. To cover the geographical, economic and societal needs of forestry in Europe, B4EST aimed to work with 8 conifer and broadleaves with advanced breeding programmes or case studies of pest-threatened forests.
To reach its goal, B4EST aimed to achieve the following scientific, technological and implementation breakthroughs:
1) Provide better scientific knowledge of species vulnerability to major disturbances and of trade-offs between production, resistance/resilience and reproductive capacity. Responses of species and populations to climate trends and major disturbances (frost, drought, biotic attacks) have been learnt from both long-term field genetic tests, experiments in controlled environments and identification of specific genetic adaptations. If well-documented trade-offs between growth, reproduction behaviour, tolerance to abiotic and biotic stressors and wood quality have been confirmed in different environments, new results did not show evident limitations for multi-trait breeding.
2) Diversify the portfolio of forest reproductive material (FRM), which requires the: i) identification of relevant species, gene pools and genotypes, ii) definition of optimal genetic diversity to preserve the adaptive capacity of planted forests under high uncertainty, and iii) development of cost- and time-efficient breeding strategies that meet the diversity and rapid change of environmental and economic contexts. Specific efforts were made on the evaluation of adaptive capacity (genetic variation at provenance and individual levels) and phenotypic plasticity patterns for response to abiotic (frost, drought) and biotic stresses. A conceptual approach of selection based on group (population) performance was developed and simulation studies showed that adapted silviculture scenarios based on genetic diversity management could help to maintain performance at stand level.
3) Make the portfolio of FRM accessible to forest managers through decision tools and recommendations. Local and regional assessment of vulnerabilities and opportunities is crucial to identifying efficient adaptation strategies. The industrial partners in the consortium were to address this challenge from the end-user perspective. Guidelines for deployment and silvicultural management of improved FRM accounting for climate projections, risks of natural disturbances, and end-user requirements and acceptance have been produced and provide a link towards decision tools developed and popularized on the project website and during stakeholder events.
4) Integrate a landscape-level view and a transnational forest sector analysis of risks, costs and benefits. For four different regions in Europe, research teams together with stakeholders identified the most important challenges and goals related to the use of improved FRM and outlined alternative deployment and management strategies currently under evaluation.
The strategic goal of B4EST was to increase forest resilience and productivity under climate change, while maintaining genetic diversity and key ecological functions and fostering a competitive EU bio-based economy. To cover the geographical, economic and societal needs of forestry in Europe, B4EST aimed to work with 8 conifer and broadleaves with advanced breeding programmes or case studies of pest-threatened forests.
To reach its goal, B4EST aimed to achieve the following scientific, technological and implementation breakthroughs:
1) Provide better scientific knowledge of species vulnerability to major disturbances and of trade-offs between production, resistance/resilience and reproductive capacity. Responses of species and populations to climate trends and major disturbances (frost, drought, biotic attacks) have been learnt from both long-term field genetic tests, experiments in controlled environments and identification of specific genetic adaptations. If well-documented trade-offs between growth, reproduction behaviour, tolerance to abiotic and biotic stressors and wood quality have been confirmed in different environments, new results did not show evident limitations for multi-trait breeding.
2) Diversify the portfolio of forest reproductive material (FRM), which requires the: i) identification of relevant species, gene pools and genotypes, ii) definition of optimal genetic diversity to preserve the adaptive capacity of planted forests under high uncertainty, and iii) development of cost- and time-efficient breeding strategies that meet the diversity and rapid change of environmental and economic contexts. Specific efforts were made on the evaluation of adaptive capacity (genetic variation at provenance and individual levels) and phenotypic plasticity patterns for response to abiotic (frost, drought) and biotic stresses. A conceptual approach of selection based on group (population) performance was developed and simulation studies showed that adapted silviculture scenarios based on genetic diversity management could help to maintain performance at stand level.
3) Make the portfolio of FRM accessible to forest managers through decision tools and recommendations. Local and regional assessment of vulnerabilities and opportunities is crucial to identifying efficient adaptation strategies. The industrial partners in the consortium were to address this challenge from the end-user perspective. Guidelines for deployment and silvicultural management of improved FRM accounting for climate projections, risks of natural disturbances, and end-user requirements and acceptance have been produced and provide a link towards decision tools developed and popularized on the project website and during stakeholder events.
4) Integrate a landscape-level view and a transnational forest sector analysis of risks, costs and benefits. For four different regions in Europe, research teams together with stakeholders identified the most important challenges and goals related to the use of improved FRM and outlined alternative deployment and management strategies currently under evaluation.
To help scientists and forest practitioners to evaluate climate change impacts and plan adaptation strategies, Climate Matching Tool and Climate Downscaling Tool (https://b4est.eu/tools) provide free and simple access to historical and future climate data. Revisited and new genetic experiments using reaction norms at different spatial and temporal scales identified key environmental drivers such as cold, drought and biotic attacks and confirmed significant genetic variation for phenotypic plasticity of important tree responses. The novel climate data were used to analyse projections of tree performance in future climates with specific emphasis on both uncertainty in the prediction and risk evaluation. Three new 50K SNP genotyping tools were developed for six major species (Fraxinus spp, poplar spp, Picea abies, Pinus sylvestris, P. pinea and P. pinaster) and have been made commercially available worldwide. High investments in genome scale genotyping allowed unprecedent resolution of species genetic structures which could efficiently help FRM traceability. Moreover, identification of numerous polymorphisms linked to specific adaptation could quickly benefit to the enrichment of current breeding populations. The project has brought genomic evaluation to species for which there were not the resources, like ash and stone pine. As emerging field in genomic evaluation, the inclusion of reaction norms and available multiple -omics information proved their potential interest. The slight to moderate advantages in adoption of genomic evaluation observed in the 7 case-studies cover either higher selection accuracy, the possibility to limit multi-trait phenotyping costs and a significant time-shortening of candidate evaluation. New breeding guidelines highlighting the specificities, the weakness and the perspectives of the current breeding programs are ready to be disseminated. Two decision support tools were developed and are available as both research platforms and as operational tools for foresters to use. Stakeholder and end-user inputs on their preferences for decision support tool design helped in developing the tools. The Planter’s guide is a joint Nordic venture for Scots pine and Norway spruce for the selection of optimal seed sources across Nordic countries in current and future climatic conditions. The Luberon2 simulation tool (https://b4est.eu/luberon2) available through Capsis platform, helped the investigation of impacts of different silvicultural scenarios on genetic diversity in case of stochastic disturbance events. The four regional scenarios clearly showed a great diversity between regions in the prevalent challenges related to sustainability of forests and forestry. However, the deployment of improved FRM seemed to have an important role to tackle these challenges in all situations. A synthesis of regulations obstacles and new opportunities for implementing trans-national use of FRM has been produced.
A survey of the demands of various societal groups towards improved FRM revealed high expectations for adaptive strategies such as diversification of tree species, artificial regeneration with improved FRM, and enrichment with FRM better adapted to future climate changes. To meet future challenge, tree breeding needs to be organized and undertaken in a more collaborative way at both national and European scales. B4EST provided up-to-date research-based information for regional decision- and policy-making, as well as for increasing understanding at the EU-level on the diversity in challenges and solutions in different regions. These results fed into an EU-level and Nordic policy brief, disseminated on the Horizon Results platform. Communication about B4EST’s work will continue after the project ends, with B4EST’s website, blog and social media acting as a central resource.